Friday 29 July 2011

Thanks to Alex - me and my ribber are now friends!


I discovered a few days back that the SRP60 was not designed to be used with the auxilary plates that are used with other ribbers including the SRP50. This was why I was having enormous trouble with using my SRP60 ribber with my Knitmaster 700. I don't know where the brackets had been put as I know my aunt would have used the ribber on a regular basis, but they have been no where to be seen.

A couple of days ago I received the long needed brackets for my 700 machine so that I can use the SRP 60 ribber without the two machines falling out with each other. Alex from Alex's Machine Knitting was very kind enough to send me the brackets as he had a spare set - many thanks again Alex. Today I attached the brackets and set the machine up with the ribber.



The ribber brackets fit into the ribber slots perfectly now and don't move allover!


I was so pleased the ribber and machine seemed to fit better together with the new brackets - much more sturdier. However I still had to make sure the ribber actually worked when knitting so i decided to knit a little swatch of 1 x 1 rib. As i knitted the initial zig-zag row i closed my eyes and hoped for the best. Here's what I got:


A ZIG ZAG!!!!!! Hurray! It worked for once. The problem I was having before was that when i knitted the zig zag row the ribber needles were not picking up the yarn in the hooks and only certain knitter needles were catching too. Now i had a perfect zig zag!


I continued with the cast on and knitted some 1 x 1 rib. This is the result...



Perfect ribbing!

I am so pleased I now have a ribber that works with the standard gauge machine. I cant thank Alex enough for sending me these brackets.

Thanks to him - me and my ribber are now friends!





Tuesday 19 July 2011

Next project!


Hello everyone just thought i would do a post to show you the bargain find of the day. Its 10 balls of 50g Katia Linen 4 ply in a light blue colour. Thought i would make myself a scoop neck pullover, maybe oversized but not sure yet, as there is only 500g.

Ive knitted a little of it on the Knitmaster 700 and even though it looked ok at tension 9 (even though its 4 ply I had to knit at tension 9 because its linen and is harder for the machine to knit) i think i am going to use it with my mid gauge HK-160 machine. I think this will not only be easier to knit on the mid gauge, but will give it more of a hand knit look, which i like in knitting.

I will be putting the 700 to bed shortly anyway as i have only one more sample (my final sample) to knit for my correspondence course. After knitting this pullover I am planning on getting my 155 set up before starting the second correspondence course using the chunky machine and the SR-155 ribber.

I will post some photos soon to show how i am doing with the linen pullover.

Bye for now

Phil

Wednesday 13 July 2011

What's your quickest way of working the right tension out???

Hey everyone

Ive been flicking through some old Knitmaster patterns from the 70s and have come across a fair few that i wouldnt mind trying to knit. The only problem is Im not really that good at getting my tension to meet the tension stated in the pattern. Normally i use Knitware to design things according to my tension but when you read from a pattern you have to follow the set tension.

Im just wondering how people go about this? To do it properly do i need to choose a tension dial i feel is appropriate for the yarn and then knit a proper tension swatch as described in the instruction book and then measure the swatch?? What if this tension didnt match the one needed in the pattern? Would i then have to choose a different tension dial number and re-do the whole tension swatch again?

People's thoughts on this would be much appreciated, thank you

Phil

Sunday 3 July 2011

Necklines and neckbands


Just thought ide post a photo of the lesson ive just finished on my course. As you can see the lesson was on necklines and neckbands. The first 4 were easy enough to do, the last one was a nightmare, it took me about 4 goes to get it right!

Thats all for now

Bye for now

Phil